Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today, the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people.

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China.

Strange Stones

Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America's shores remade our own country a century ago.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular best seller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.

China in Ten Words

From one of China’s most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country’s meteoric economic and social transformation. Characterized by Yu Hua’s trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the “Chinese miracle” and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

National Public Radio's Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world's most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford's 20 years of observing first-hand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China's border with Kazakhstan. As he takes listeners on this journey, he also takes them through China's past and present while he tries to make sense of this complex nation's potential future.

China: A History

Many nations define themselves in terms of territory or people; China defines itself in terms of history. Taking into account the country's unrivaled, voluminous tradition of history writing, John Keay has composed a vital and illuminating overview of the nation's complex and vivid past. Keay's authoritative history examines 5,000 years in China, from the time of the Three Dynasties through Chairman Mao and the current economic transformation of the country.

Mao's Great Famine

Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward. It lead to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter's extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

The Search for Modern China

The history of China is as rich and strange as that of any country on earth. Yet for many, China’s history remains unknown, or known only through the stylized images that generations in the West have cherished or reviled as truth. With his command of character and event - the product of 30 years of research and reflection in the field - Spence dispels those myths in a powerful narrative. Over four centuries of Chinese history, Spence fashions the astonishing story of the effort to achieve a modern China.

Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China

The story of Tzu Hsi is the story of the last empress in China. In this audiobook, Pearl S. Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rules during a time of intense turbulence. Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of 17 to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort.

Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life

Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist socioeconomic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy, society, and position in the world. Three decades later we are living with the results.

The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China

Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shaghai, China's borderlands are populated by around one hundred million people who are not Han Chinese. For many of these restive minorities, the old Chinese adage "the mountains are high and the Emperor far away", meaning Beijing's grip on power is tenuous and its influence unwelcome, continues to resonate.

Mao: The Unknown Story

Based on a decade of research and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this is the most authoritative biography of Mao ever written.

In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China

For three years Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown of his wife's family, and their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights.

Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts

In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers.

The American Civil War

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937 - 1945

For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China two full years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.

The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power

Many see China's rise as a threat to US leadership in Asia and beyond. Thomas J. Christensen argues instead that the real challenge lies in dissuading China from regional aggression while eliciting its global cooperation. Drawing on decades of scholarship and experience as a senior diplomat, Christensen offers a deep perspective on China's military and economic capacity. Assessing China's political outlook and strategic goals, Christensen shows how nationalism and the threat of domestic instability influence the party's decisions about regional and global affairs.

Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower

When Hu Jintao, China's then vice president, came to visit the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero in 2002, he asked Hank Paulson to be his guide. It was a testament to the pivotal role that Goldman Sachs played in helping China experiment with private enterprise. In Dealing with China, the best-selling author of On the Brink draws on his unprecedented access to both the political and business leaders of modern China to answer several key questions.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

At the age of 16, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor's numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

At 19, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime reporting at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For 12 years of 80-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake.

Lost on Planet China

When the travel bug bit, J. Maarten Troost took on the world's most populous and intriguing nation. As Troost relates his gonzo adventure - dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai, eating yak in Tibet, deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as cattle penis with garlic), and visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead) - he reveals a vast, complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think.

Publisher's Summary

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society.

Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

What the Critics Say

"Hessler's writing is lovely. His observations are evocative, insightful, and often poignant--and just as often, funny. It's a pleasure to read of his (mis)adventures. Hessler returned to the U.S. with a new perspective on modern China and its people. After reading River Town, you'll have one, too." (Amazon.com review)

Having lived in China for 16 years, I am an avid fan of Hessler's work, and have hard copies of all three books as well as the audiobooks. However, I prefer Audiobooks, because of my lifestyle. What I don't understand is why Hessler would allow Berkrot to read his books. The books are all 5-Star, but Berkrot is a lousy choice for books filled with Chinese characters and Chinese words. I recognize that I am biased because I live in China and know when Chinese is being butchered, and I recognize that the cringes I have to deal with at every other word are partially my problem. I guess my collection of Audible books with Chinese topics and themes would probably rival any other collector's, so I consider myself a knowledgeable critic on this subject. The pity of it is, while Hessler's hardbacks are on my top shelf, Berkrot is, hands down, the "worst" narrator for Chinese-themed books that I have listened to - nobody butchers like Berkrot. Hessler has spent so much time in China - why would he want someone to read his book that does such a poor job with Chinese names and words? I hope Hessler is reading these, as I'm sure he'll keep writing about China, and I hope he can find someone who can at least get, say 5% of the pronunciations in the realm of acceptable. If Berkrot "must" read your work, tell him its "Bei "J"ing. It has a "J" because it sounds the same as John or Jeff. Would Berkrot say Zhohn and Zheff??

Though this narrative is almost 15 years old (Hessler worked for the Peace Corps in the late 1990's), and that seems a long time ago at the frantic pace of change in present day China, most of the observations seem relevant today, especially those addressing the human dimension. The narrator has a young 20s male voice, a bit on the nasal side, but reading at a lively and varied rhythm. He is great at making distinct voices for different characters. As is often the case with books on China, this reader mispronounces many Chinese names, but it's a minor issue. He has a good sense for dramatic pauses and for getting "in character." It's easy to mistakenly think that you're listening to the author himself.

Loved the book. More than one of my friends that live in China told me that their interest in the country and the language was inspired by this book. I can see why. In the reviews of the Hessler Trilogy the narrator is getting a lot of hassle for his voice and his butchery of the Chinese. It can be painful initially for someone that speaks Chinese to listen to the mispronunciations and I would recommend that books that contain a lot of dialogue in a foreign language be read by someone that has a basic knowledge of that language. However, I did enjoy the accents the narrator provided. He has an amazing faculty for mimicking Chinese prostitutes and old ladies.

this provides an at times comic, sometimes poignant portrait of modern day China in the from about 2005-10. I especially loved his tales from the small mountain village where he had a ramshackle weekend home.

I liked learning what life is like for a foreigner in an average Chinese town. I was fascinated by how Hessler naturally developed a Chinese alter-ego as his language skills developed. I also enjoyed the subversive Don Quixote presentation in the last part of the book.

What about Peter Berkrot’s performance did you like?

His pronunciation of Mandarin.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Wouldn't have been able to--it's quite long! Besides, it isn't a story so much as an account. It has no plot since it is a memoir.

Any additional comments?

I am now listening to Oracle Bones and have Country Driving in my queue. Peter Hessler is a good writer and his descriptions of living and working in China are interesting.

I really enjoyed this book. Having spent a year in China at about the same time referred to in this book, it brought back many memories of the China of that period. The author is a keen observer of daily life and an excellent writer. I also admired his courage in getting out among the people and his persistence in learning the language.

The narration of the story is quite another matter. The book is sprinkled with Chinese words and while the narrator can be forgiven for not pronouncing them all correctly, no attempt has been made to find out the correct pronunciation for even the most commonly used words, some of which are repeated literally hundreds of times throughout the book, always incorrectly. In addition, whenever the book quotes a Chinese person the reader goes into some weird accent, a bit like a caricature of a Mexican accent. I was left thinking that the narrator had probably never met a Chinese person in his life.

This one is great if you are working on a thesis, dissertation, or article on the Chinese culture from an American peace corps member's point of view. I think of it more as a documentary. It bored me as what I thought to be a novel. If you are eager to learn about Chinese culture views of the U.S. , and the rest of the world... THIS, is your book!

What made the experience of listening to River Town the most enjoyable?

Really great personal anecdotes from the author

What did you like best about this story?

Listening to the interactions between the author and his students and how their relationship developed.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

I don't personally like the Chinese accent used when reading out the lines from the Chinese characters and I think it would've been better to have someone who had better Mandarin tones for the Chinese names/words (but appreciate that's asking quite a lot)

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Listening to him recount Chinese students with names like "Mo' Money" act out Don Quixote

Any additional comments?

A great easy listen.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Joanne

Farnborough, United Kingdom

12/31/11

Overall

"very good book, highly recommend it"

I loved this book - I have listened to it numerous times and it is still as good! It takes you into China and you feel like you are there sharing the authors experiences with him. The narrator is excellent as well - it makes a big difference when they pronounce the words correctly and he has a lovely voice. The author has a very good way of explaining how he felt as an outsider in China, and how he also fitted in. I have since downloaded all his books on here and really wish there was more! If you want to know about Chinese culture and their everyday lives then this is the book for you. It has made me really want to visit this fascinating country.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Pete Millwood

Oxford

6/13/12

Overall

"Absorbing book ruined by narrator"

This is an engrossing, accessible but nonetheless perspicacious book, one of several on China written by Hessler. However, this recording is ruined by the narrator's lack of knowledge of the Chinese language. Although in English, the book includes references to many Chinese terms and sayings which are hopelessly mispronounced by Peter Berkrot. To anyone with even a superficial knowledge of how Chinese should sound, this is distracting and detracting. This may not be a problem for those with absolutely no knowledge of Chinese (Berkrot cannot even pronounce the most fundamental and basic of words), although it would nonetheless give such listeners a false impression of how Chinese is supposed to sound. While it is understandable that it would have been difficult to get a narrator who also spoke fluent Mandarin, it surely could not have been that difficult to find someone who had at least some familiarity with the language. A shame.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

MR T CROOK

7/5/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Excellent, touching and funny."

I am a teacher in China and although my time is 20years on from Peter's, many of his experiences echo my own - or rather mine echo his, having been diluted somewhat by the increased external influences on China over the past two decades. The narrative really helps one comprehend the 'Chinese' approach to life and subtlety draws humour by highlighting authorial experiences from both America and China. The only problem I have with this audiobook is with the narrator's Mandarin pronunciation, however people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and I doubt my efforts would be more accurate.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Kindle Customer

2/8/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Great book, Appalling Narrator"

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He can't pronounce a single word of Chinese correctly. The city of Chengdu is refered to as Chengde about fifty times despite Chengde being a completely different city. At another point he reads the character Xue over and over again, during a section where the author discusses studying Chinese. He says Xue about 25 times in a row, slowly, over and over. He says it wrong every single time.

He's actually a decent narrator but somewhere between the pronunciation and his insistence on giving all the Chinese characters a semi-racist-sounding Chinaman-voice he ruins the whole thing.

It would have taken half an hour to learn how to say the fifty or so Chinese words in the book. He didn't bother. It's an insult to the author and an insult to the audience.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Alison

Burnham-on-Sea, United Kingdom

5/4/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Gentle yet also quite compelling"

The experiences of the teacher and his fellow teacher at the college where they were based for 2 years are fascinating. Because it was written about a time period when China was slowly beginning to open up but was very far from where it is now (2013), the book seems to span the two eras really effectively.

The writing is very straight-forward, journalistic in its style with limited descriptive passages but where they do appear, they are evocative.

The reader's voice took me a while to warm to but this was fine after about 1 hour. Others have mentioned that the way Chinese words are pronounced is wrong sometimes - but as I speak no Chinese at all, it didn't bother me!

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.